


The cheerful day from night

by Lilliburlero



Category: Lord Peter Wimsey - Dorothy L. Sayers
Genre: Christmas, Geese, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to Shakespeare, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 04:08:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,168
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3160628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/pseuds/Lilliburlero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some figurative geese in Peter and Bunter's early life together. And one real one.</p><p>*</p><p>Advisory: references to PTSD.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The cheerful day from night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kindkit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindkit/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Buttons and Bayonets: A Small History of the Great War](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090161) by [kindkit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindkit/pseuds/kindkit). 



> To kindkit's [request](http://lilliburlero.dreamwidth.org/61161.html?thread=86505#cmt86505). I've taken the liberty of using some events and minor characters from kindkit's fic [Buttons and Bayonets](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1090161). If my effort doesn't please, then go and (re-)read that instead, because it is _amazing_.
> 
> The title is from Tennyson's _In Memoriam_ , XXX. 'Ring out wild bells' is from the same, lyric CVI.
> 
> The porter's speech can be found at the beginning of Act 2, scene iii of _Macbeth_.

Christmas truces were a distant memory, but so were stiff memoranda concerning the penalties attendant on fraternisation with the enemy and orders to mark the natal day of the Prince of Peace by mounting raids and maintaining barrages. The last Christmas Day of the war was, apart from the usual artillery racket, a quiet one. They spent it encoding messages for one another using Playfair, and swapping them for decryption. Major Wimsey threw down his pencil.

‘You sentimental beast, Bunter. It’s the first two stanzas of “Ring Out, Wild Bells”, and the keyword is “friend”.’

‘I thought it apposite. And I confess I miss the sound of change-ringing, sir.’

‘Yes. So do I.’ Wimsey stretched both legs before him and stared absently towards the entrance to the dug-out. His face, for a moment as desolate as the moonscape outside, hardened into facetiousness. ‘Come, Sergeant. It’s been nearly eleven minutes since you emitted your inimitable sigh of consummation, and you’ve been doodlin' ever since to spare my blushes.’ 

‘You were kind enough not to trouble me with an excessively arduous puzzle, sir. This group in particular—’

‘Out with it, Bunter.’

‘The keyword is "Birnam", and the Porter, sir. “Knock, knock, knock! Who's there? Faith, here's an English tailor come hither, for stealing out of a French hose: come in, tailor—” ’

Wimsey whipped his head around, his face twisted into a horrid leer. ‘ "Here you may roast your goose—But this place is too cold for hell. I'll devil-porter it no further: I had thought to have let in some of all professions that go the primrose way—" ’

Bunter closed his eyes for a fraction of a second longer than a blink. ‘Sir—I hesitate to prescribe, but a little rest might—’

‘Oh, Christ, no—as it happens, not. Though I can quite see why you were worried—I beg your pardon, Bunter. No, I took the part once—at school. My House put it on. To be honest, I was more use in the prop room, but there are a couple of men still alive who can embarrass me by rememberin’ the Flim’s attempt at Scotch.’ 

‘I'm sure you were a very competent North Briton, sir. I saw the play in question at His Majesty's Theatre a few years before the war. The scenery was most memorable.’

Wimsey grinned and ran on, in a Scottish accent that was indeed just embarrassing enough to mitigate the improper content of the speech, ‘ "—nose-painting, sleep and urine." Old Benson vetoed the bit about lechery as unsuitable for the mouth of a thirteen-year-old squeaker. God, a drink. I could do with a drink.’ 

‘Ah. Well, sir. You will recall the young person with whom I became acquainted in Wancourt, sir, and the prodigious talents of that—individual in the matters of supply and distribution—’

‘Yes, yes, Bunter—’

‘I have taken the liberty of _reserving,_ sir—I’m afraid it’s a little disappointing—rather an overdose of Bons Bois—’

*

A month, a week and a day after the Armistice, Bunter wrote a letter, which he thought of as his first _real_ letter, and gave it to Cpl Chambers, who for one more reason than habitual dependability could be trusted to post it, as he promised, the moment he arrived in Dover. Nevertheless, he could scarcely expect a reply before the new year. On Christmas Day Bunter dispensed as much good cheer, and felt about as much joy, as might a shop window automaton. Only in his buried thoughts was he a man. No-one noticed: there were perhaps two persons on earth who could tell Mervyn Bunter’s genuine sentiments from their simulacra, and one of them was in a darkened room in Norfolk, dosed up to the eyeballs with bromides. The reply, when it came, brought worse news than he had expected: written in a decisive, rather boyish hand with firm downstrokes, it was unmistakably dictated—as the text made clear, the scribe was his sister, Lady Mary. However, the content was, if low-spirited, lucid, except for one extraneous allusion to the extraordinary mobility of Beerbohm Trees from Birnam Wood. Turning the second of the two sheets over, Bunter saw a inextricable jumble of letters lightly scrawled in pencil on the back. Glad that these had escaped the notice of Lt Elliot, Bunter took the first opportunity of a break from his duties to draw a square, five by five, on a piece of brown paper. _This place is too cold for hell. Come and be warm by my side, and always, as soon as ever you can. P._

*

A year, a month, a week and a day after the Armistice, Bunter sat in the small butler’s pantry at 110a Piccadilly, sipping a well-deserved cup of tea. It had been a rather strenuous couple of hours: the scullery-kitchen of a second-floor London flat, particularly one so new, perfect and expensive, was not the most commodious place to dry-pluck and hang a goose. It was an onerous operation, and one that Bunter had not performed for some time—not since boyhood, in fact—but nor was he in the least prepared to resign this particular carcase to the cook-daily. But now the goose was revolving in magnificent solitude in the cold-larder, the down and feathers thriftily reserved for household use and the kitchen restored to its wonted immaculacy. Bunter, though neater than anyone who had spent the afternoon readying poultry for the table had any right to be, bore distressing evidence of these labours on his person.

A pale figure materialised behind the frosted glass of the pantry door. Bunter jumped up to open it.

‘Frightfully poor form of me, disturbin’ your inner sanctum here, Bunter, but I wondered if you might like to come up to the library for a drink—’

‘You need only have rung, my lord.’

‘Seemed a bit imperious, somehow—Mervyn.’

‘Oh. I should be honoured, my lord.’

His lordship’s faculty of observation supervened upon social awkwardness. ‘Is that—blood on your shirt-front?’

‘The Christmas goose was delivered today. It is necessary to pluck a goose whilst it's still warm, and remove the head and wings to hang it, my lord.’

‘Splendid. May I see?’

‘Of course, my lord.’ Feeling foolish, Bunter ushered his employer through to the kitchen and opened the cold-larder door.  They regarded the suspended corpse for a moment in silence.

‘Excellent, Bunter. Here you shall roast your goose. If you’d like to.’

‘I believe the goose in that monologue is figurative, my lord. An obsolete term for a tailor’s iron—’

Wimsey turned on the ball of his foot and looked up at him. ‘ _Mervyn_.’

‘My lord?’

‘There’s another figurative meaning—’s it happens, there’s a third—but they're a bit filthy for both the modern taste and my purposes, so let it drop. And please—if you would just for now—call me Peter.’

Bunter swallowed and nodded. He put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. ‘Come away, my—Peter. It's chilly back here. You’ll catch your—’

‘Really? I’m roasting.’

**Author's Note:**

> Herbert Beerbohm Tree's 1911 production of _Macbeth_ (in which he took the title role), though not elaborately and absurdly realistic in the manner of some of his other Shakespearean stagings, was not found to be remarkable for its acting. 
> 
> Peter's housemaster, who censors the Porter's remarks on lechery, is [A. C. Benson](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A._C._Benson) of that ilk. In fact, Benson left Eton in 1903, probably just a little too early to have been there when Peter was.


End file.
